Thank You For The Music
by charleygirl
Summary: The beginning of the end may not be as sad as one imagines...


**Author's Note:**

KCS asked for another pre-retirement fic from me (the first was _To Offer Solace_) and I'm happy to oblige. :)

This fic is set after Granada's _Memoirs_, and therefore follows their story continuity. I've always felt that the ending of _The Cardboard Box_ would have pushed the Brett Holmes towards retirement.

The title is from ABBA's song of the same name. It felt appropriate.

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**THANK YOU FOR THE MUSIC**

"Holmes, this has to stop," I said.

He glanced up at me in surprise, and then winced as the sudden movement made me touch the antiseptic swab to the gash in his forehead with more force than I had intended. In the dim light he looked ghastly, my priority having been to treat the injury before cleaning the dried blood from where it had run in rivulets down the side of his face. "Are you about to abandon my treatment, Doctor?"

"That's not what I meant and you know it. We could have been killed tonight."

"Nonsense." The word emerged almost as a snort, so dismissive was the tone.

"It is not nonsense," I insisted, discarding the swab and reaching for the scissors and surgical tape. "If those policemen had arrived just a few seconds later Fortescue would have shattered your skull." I softened my own tone and added, "We can't go on like this any more, old man."

Holmes looked at me from the corner of his eye as I worked, but said nothing. I wondered whether he had the beginnings of a concussion after that glancing blow with a weighted Indian club earlier in the evening, but he seemed lucid enough and his pupils were reacting satisfactorily to light. He would need to take things slowly for a few days in any case, to allow the other bruises and lacerations he had received in the fight time to heal. I would be glad of some rest myself, for it had been a fraught few days caught between my patients and Holmes's search for the man behind the recent gold snuff box thefts.

We had been unfortunate enough to surprise the gang at work in an empty house in Bloomsbury – somehow knowledge of Holmes's investigations had leaked back to the ringleader and they brought their raid forward, unluckily coinciding with my friend's intentions to make a reconnoitre of the building. The men were ruffians, and determined ones, setting upon us like a pack of hounds until the timely arrival of the police, who had been alerted by the night watchman down the road. In truth we had been outnumbered and outgunned, and I thought for some moments that we would not escape with our lives, especially when Miles Fortescue, the aristocratic leader of the gang, brought Holmes down with a savage blow. The sudden sound of a police whistle stopped him from battering my friend further, just as I was trying to free my revolver from my pocket. Had the forces of the law not chosen that moment to appear, I knew not what might have happened.

I cleaned Holmes's face and dressed his wounds in silence. When he still did not respond to my remark, I continued, "I'm slowing down, I know I am. A few years ago I would have seen that blackguard's club and winged him with a bullet before he had time to strike, but I can't do that any more. You know that as well as I do."

"It was a fluke, Watson, nothing more. In the melee, with such poor light, it is little wonder that you did not see him earlier." Holmes was as commanding, as insistent as ever, but I was not going to let him pretend that all was well. In the few years since the turn of the new century things had changed, the _world_ had changed. The intangible code by which the criminal classes had operated under Moriarty and his ilk was gone – the work of a detective was now more dangerous than it had ever been. In our younger days we might have been able to deal with the change, to move with the times, but not now. I no longer possessed the quick reflexes that had once been mine; my stamina for chasing Holmes all over town at any hour of the day or night and then managing a full surgery on top was lessening as the years went by. I no longer heard the words 'The game's afoot' at some ungodly hour of the morning with excitement but rather trepidation, a fear of what the next case might bring.

Though he would never admit it, Holmes had also passed his peak. He tried to hide it but he had not been a well man for some months following an attack of bronchitis brought on by standing on a freezing cold riverbank at the conclusion of the case of _The Cardboard Box_. A terrible depression took hold of him after he watched the police drag the bodies of Mary Browner and her lover from the ice, and these combined had considerably weakened his previously iron constitution. He knew as well as I that the Holmes of ten years ago would not have been winded by the attack from Fortescue's thugs that evening.

"It was no fluke," I said quietly when I had finished my ministrations and allowed him to lie back upon the sofa.

He reached up and grasped my sleeve with bandaged fingers. "What are you saying, Watson?" he asked.

I hesitated. It was a direct invitation to voice that subject which had been increasingly on my mind of late. Though the timing might not have been ideal, it was an opportunity I could not afford to ignore. I drew a blanket over him and went to the sideboard to pour us both a glass of brandy. As I poured the liquor into the glasses, I said, "Have you considered that now might be a sensible time to call it a day; to leave the stage, as it were, before something happens with which we are unable to deal?"

The tired grey eyes widened. "Are you suggesting - "

"Yes."

"Retirement?"

I met his gaze with a serious one of my own. "Yes, Holmes, I am. We both know that I am getting to old for this – even without the added discomfort of my old wounds I have been struggling. The break-in at Mrs Maberley's house a few months ago finally convinced me. Even if you can continue the game, I am afraid that I cannot."

Holmes waved an imperious hand. "I should never dream of remaining in practice without you by my side."

"Holmes," I said, knowing his masterfulness of old, "Please listen to me. I am telling you that I can no longer be a useful partner in these endeavours."

There was a pause, and I wondered whether I should not have put it so bluntly. We had been working together for so many years that to boldly state that I wished to dissolve our partnership would naturally come as a shock. However, I need not have worried, for Holmes sighed and then gave me one of those smiles of his that were no more than a wry twist of one corner of his mouth.

"I know, Watson, I know," he said, much to my surprise. "In truth, you have just voiced the thought that has been circling my mind these last few months. You are right about the Three Gables, my dear fellow; I should not have left you on guard alone. I think too highly of you to wish to see you end your days at the hands of men like Steve Dixie or Miles Fortescue."

I blinked, thinking for a moment that I had not heard him right, and sat down heavily in my armchair. "You mean…you have been considering retirement yourself? Why did you not mention it to me?"

"Presumably for the same reason you neglected to tell me of your own deliberations: we each believed that other would wish to remain in harness. Instead it would appear that we are agreed upon the point."

"What caused you to make up your mind?" I asked carefully.

Holmes's pale face clouded. "The Cushing case first forced me to consider the possibility. I have no wish to operate in a world I no longer understand, Watson. So many of the crimes committed nowadays are without logic or reason. I may have created my own profession in order to stimulate my mind, but I will admit to a desire to use my powers to help others. No one involved in that case was untouched by tragedy – there was nothing but darkness from start to finish. So many lives destroyed."

I could not disagree with him; so many of our cases of late had had unhappy endings. "But what will you do? I have my practice, my patients, to occupy my time, but your life has always been your work. How will you cope without it?" Unbidden, the late, unlamented spectre of the cocaine bottle blossomed in my mind's eye.

"I have yet to decide." Holmes threw me a sly look. "Perhaps I shall retire to the Sussex Downs and keep bees."

I had to laugh at that, for the image was delicious. "Oh, come now, Holmes - "

"You think I speak in jest? We shall see, Watson, we shall see. We may be embarking upon the greatest adventure yet. However," he added, raising a hand to forestall any comment I might make, "to return to the musical analogy you employed earlier, like any great maestro I cannot leave the stage without a final performance. It would be unthinkable."

"An encore? But after tonight, Holmes, can it be anything but a disaster?"

There was determination in his eyes, despite his smile. "Oh, it will be a masterpiece, Watson. You can expect nothing less of me, I promise."

FIN


End file.
